Well, since most of us agree that the romans were our favorites, who about we change this to your favorite middle age empire?

To those who are wondering what defines "ancient", Oxford historians refer to anything after Constantine I became Roman Emperor (in 306) as being "modern history", and everything before as "antiquity".

Me personally I like Aksum, mainly because although they were not militarily powerful, they were the biggest trading empire of the ancient world, facilitating trade between southern Africa (ivory, animals), India (spices), China (silk), and personally mining gold to be sold to various empires; probably the most underrated civilization in history

@Komrade
The British empire was larger than the Mongol empire.

All of you keep talking about rome. Please research the Persian empire through the ages. We beat rome many times :D

I like the 'we' bit there Reza, as if you had a hand in the battles.

Note that every nation lost battles at some point or another. It's rather meaningless. Hannibal absolutely owned Roman forces and yet Carthage still lost the war and was relegated to a minor footnote in the great history of the world.

A bit off topic, but recently I found some interesting theories about aaaaaancient colonization of Europe, from people that came from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean islands, in a book written by such a Felice Vinci,which begins by explaining why Troy is not in Turkey and ends to connect the people from the civilization of ancient Greeks, Mycenaean, Veda indians, previous British and other ... Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

@Moros:

Thanks for the correction, but the Mongol Empire was still the largest contiguous empire, correct?

My favorite empire was the Assyrian Empire. Hundreds of years before Rome and quite a bit before the Persian Empre, too. Definitely one of the smallest empires, but also one of the first. The Assyrians were also the first in the area (Ancient Near East) to have an organized army.

Oh, kind of like where the Babylonians were? The Babylonians also preceded many of the great civilizations we all also know and love. They were BOSS builders, and those Hanging Gardens... a marvel of human architecture BC.

Babylonians were good....hate the Assyrians...too crazy and bloodthirsty.

As for Persians.. ??? A territory about 1/7 their size (Greece) ended up being their downfall...not sure how good the Persians were on their part...they fought miserably.

Oh, well at least through their mistake, Greece built their biggest empire afterwards...

Japan is also pretty awesome all around, but they are mostly a middle age-modern age civilization

A bit off topic, but recently I found some interesting theories about aaaaaancient colonization of Europe, from people that came from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean islands, in a book written by such a Felice Vinci,which begins by explaining why Troy is not in Turkey

How reliable is that; you are aware that Troy has been located (and it is in fact in modern-day Turkey), right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy

Troy (..) was a city, both factual and legendary, in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, south of the southwest end of the Dardanelles / Hellespont and northwest of Mount Ida.

The Best Empire of all time: Probably Mongalia. But they aren't my favorite.
Alexander's Empire is certianly my favorite. Best General of all time

Germany was also cool.

Depends on what you mean by Germany....
Prussia, WWI, WWII?

WWII

All of them....

By germany i also mean the barbarians next to rome during the 300-476, the frankish kingdoms, the holy roman empire, and the habsburgs.

I simply like present-day Germany.